cases a week are replaced by beginners averaging 3; (2) the loss from production of time needed for the experienced to train, supervise, and advise the beginners; (3) the loss in efficiency when so many cases during prosecution are handled each by a succession of different examiners; (4) the deterioration in quality that comes when the influx of so many new men combined with a top heavy workload makes adequate supervision almost impossible; and (5) the cumulative loss to the Patent Office of its heavy investment in each trained and experienced examiner who leaves, totaling over $1,500,000 each year.

The potential gain in efficiency obtainable from reducing these losses is great.

These are immediate effects today.

But what are the future effects of the present salary scales? The Patent Office requires about 230 administrative or specialist positions in GS-13 or above, for which 15 to 20 years' experience in the Office is considered a normal prerequisite. When these become vacant, how competently will they be filled. Compared with present effects, future effects are even more dismaying.

Here is a recent chart. It shows the year when examiners in all grades from top to bottom entered the Patent Office. For those at the left, who entered in 1930 or before, the retirement benefits of long service make resigning costly; so they wait until retirement age to go.

It is the group of 1931 and later, less restrained by accrued retirement rights, from which so many of the more able examiners have been lured recently by the greener pastures of private employment. In the entire 15-year period from 1931 through 1945, only 177 are left, many unqualified for high position.

Yet these higher positions will soon be vacant. Even since this chart, many men have gone. Of 219 shown as entering through 1930, only 191 now remain; 84 of these are eligible to retire today; 107 more will be eligible by 1960. In the last 3 months, 5 of our highest positions have been vacated, and 2 more will be in June. Further, nearly all examiners are retiring early, partly from dissatisfaction with existing conditions, partly for the very persuasive reason that outside of the Office, many can work fewer hours, with more pay. If most of these eligible to retire by 1960 should do so, what then?

If the Patent Office could keep and use every one of the 177 remaining of those who entered during the entire 15-year period up to 1946— every one, good, bad, or horrible-down to those who today have been in the Office for 10 years and less could 177 men fill 230 positions? Yet month by month, the loss of experienced men, caused by low salaries, increases, with real peril for the future.

Is this a time for appointing more study committees?
Or time for action?

IV. POSSIBLE MEASURES TO REDUCE EXAMINER LOSSES

In the portion of this fiscal year ending May 15, the Patent Office has lost 185 examiners. It anticipates losing many more before June 30. Are any unused measures available to reduce or replace these losses?

By section 104 of Public Law 763, the 83d Congress gave the Civil Service Commission authority to raise salaries to top-of-grade levels when Government salaries are otherwise noncompetitive with private industry. The Patent Office has already asked and received full cooperation from the Civil Service Commission under this law. But what good is a GS-7 top-of-grade offer of $5,335, when others are offering $7,200, as happens frequently today?

Congress has also authorized recruiting measures. The Patent Office has used these to the limit. Low salary levels have made recruiting of experienced men a hopeless quest. To tap the last remaining resource, the Patent Office this fiscal year has sent 37 men to 147 colleges and universities, at an estimated expense of over $30,000. Despite its best sales arguments, the low salary levels have dropped the Patent Office so far out of competition that virtually all of those who come are doing so only for training purposes, planning to leave the Patent Office for private practice when law studies are completed. The Office has lost 185 examiners since last July 1, nearly all experienced. Against this loss, the total in-hiring has been 177; a net loss in men of 8 for this period, and a net loss of Patent Office investment in training and experience of well over a million dollars.

Top-of-grade increases have failed. Recruiting is failing. Only a complete statutory revision of salaries to competitive levels can meet the need.

V. SUMMARY

It becomes increasingly apparent that to recruit and hold permanent career personnel in such a scientific and professional field as this, a revised salary schedule, new from bottom to top, is vital, and urgent.

We believe that S. 734 might ease the situation somewhat, but would not permanently cure it. The peculiar and rare qualifications needed for such positions, often little related to rungs on the ladder of administrative authority contemplated by the existing GS schedule, suggest that S. 1326 would come closer to solving the problem.

We believe further that a schedule of salary levels along the lines of S. 1326 adequate to recruit and retain career examiners would greatly improve the efficiency of operation of the Patent Office. It would induce men of high ability to remain in the service. It would reduce turnover, with its tremendous wastage in training costs now lost to the Office each year.. It would gain a higher production and efficiency of experienced career personnel. There is at least an even chance that this higher efficiency might bring about, along with a marked improvement in the quality of the work, an actual decrease in operating

cost.

Thank you.

Would you care to have the two charts I referred to inserted? Senator NEUBERGER. I was going to say, Mr. Whitmore, your testimony would not have too much clarity unless those charts do appear in the record.

I would like to ask the staff if that is not correct in their opinion? Mr. KERLIN. Yes.

Mr. WHITMORE. Might I put them in the record?

Senator NEUBERGER. Yes. I am given to understand that you wish. to submit a supplemental statement regarding section 803 (a). (See p. 320 for supplemental statement by Mr. Whitmore.)

Senator NEUBERGER. Thank you very much, Mr. Whitmore.

Mr. KERLIN. Mr. Chairman, at this point, I would like to ask your permission to insert a letter in the record from Senator Joseph C. O'Mahoney, that has direct connection with the subject just talked about, patent attorneys.

Senator NEUBERGER. We will be very pleased to include Senator O'Mahoney's letter in the record following Mr. Whitmore's testimony.

(The letter referred to is as follows:)

UNITED STATES SENATE,
COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON PATENTS, TRADE-MARKS, AND COPYRIGHTS,

Hon. OLIN D. JOHNSTON,

Chairman, Senate Post Office and Civil Service Committee,

Senate Office Building, Washington, D. C.

May 21, 1957.

DEAR OLIN: I understand that the purpose of S. 1326 is to attract to and retain in Government service the quality and quantity of personnel necessary to carry out the professional, scientific, and technological functions of specified agencies.

I am delighted that S. 1326 includes recognition of the patent classifiers and examiners in the classification schedule of this general bill you are sponsoring for the classification and compensation of scientific and professional positions in the Government. I sincerely believe the position of our governmental scientific aids must be improved to retain them in our essential governmental scientific agencies, otherwise we may lose ground to the Soviet in key areas of research and development.

As chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Patents, Trademarks, and Copyrights, I desire to place the following facts before the committee.

The studies by the Patents, Trademarks, and Copyrights Subcommittee have convinced me that patent examiners and patent classifiers should, in the public interest, be granted an improved status.

To qualify for a classification as either a patent examiner or a patent classifier, one must have sufficient credit hours in engineering, chemistry, or physics which, with other course hours, would entitle one to a degree. The average patent examiner or classifier thus has his degree in engineering, chemistry, or physics. He also has his law degree or is taking course work to obtain it, as his hope of reaching the upper grades is conditioned on it. The patent examiner and patent classifier's secondary classification is in engineering, chemistry, or physics and the law. It is further noted that Patent Office Board of Appeals examiners and interference examiners must have both law and the necessary technical background.

The Patent Office has had difficulty in obtaining and retaining adequate examing personnel to keep up with its workload and backlog. This is evident from the October 1955 hearings held before the Patents Subcommittee and from the studies of this subcommittee.

In the 20th century the Congress has supported the Patent Office in its expansion as the art in which patents are issued has expanded. If patents increase the production of the United States, that increased production by the issuance of more patents in the Patent Office by reason of an increased staff will do more to balance the governmental budget than allowing the Patent Office to exist with inadequate personnel. It is better to give the Patent Office the help than to have a large backlog of cases.

I am enclosing a brief study made by a member of the staff of the Patents, Trademarks, and Copyrights Subcommittee with the aid of the Patent Office. The findings and data presented in this study speak for themselves and point up the relative instability of the present patent-examining corps, which is due to the excessively frequent turnover rate of patent examiners in the highly scientific and technical arts. The data also indicates the extremely serious and damaging effect of patent-examiner turnover as it concerns Patent Office accomplishment. The help provided by this bill would go far in aiding the Patent Office to retain their skilled scientific and technical personnel and accomplish their duties as directed by law.

Sincerely yours,

JOSEPH C. O'MAHONEY, Chairman.